Things to Ask your Event Planner before signing on
You are planning a huge event of your life. It can be your wedding, your firstborn’s birthday, your graduation party, housewarming party a corporate annual dinner – number of different things. Now you have decided you want to hire professional help to make this event a success. You go through referrals, search website directories, ask people to recommend you some company or planner. You are armed with lots of information but still finding it difficult to make a decision on whom to choose.
Here I have broadly categorized the questions you should ask your potential event planner before committing to working with them.
- What are your areas of expertise? What sort of events have you done?
Some event planners have a wide variety of event types they work with but some planners work only in specific domains. It is best to ask event planner what sort of thing they mostly do, do they do huge corporate events or small intimate party affairs? Be sure to ask if they have held events before that line up with your theme/idea of the event. Lets say you are a technology company and looking for a event planner who can help manage a Product Promotion Event. If the said event planning company has done this before they’d know what is to be expected of such an event. Ask them to show photos, success stats and testimonials of previous events.
- What services do they offer?
Would you be requiring all services from A-Z for the event, food, photography, marketing, venue, audio visual etc etc OR do you require limited services and would be handle the rest yourself? Ask the event planner what is their ‘capacity’ of work and what is the list of services they offer. A good event planner has lot of network links, suppliers, vendors,caterers, staffers connections and gets you complete services so you can sit back and relax while somebody else gets the job done for you.
- What’s covered in your charges and if there are any hidden charges?
This is of grave importance. You don’t want to end up hiring an event planner who is out of your budget, or has hidden charges you didn’t see coming. Its vital that you have an open discussion about numbers. Ask them point blank about their charges and what it entails in terms of services? The more cut in dry you are they more you know what and what not to expect. Ask what is their plan for payment? Man hours? One complete event charge/flat fee? A percentage? Per head? Will you be paying the vendors directly or will the event planner handle that themself? Also establish when the payment needs to be made, date, form of payment, receipt etc
- Who will be your point of contact for the event planning?
This is important to know. Find out who will your point of contact, will it be a team of people working under one? What is the hierarchy like. Who will be the backup if the person in command is not available or ill. Try to meet your contact in person so that you can gauge their vibe, are they easy to communicate with? Are your feedbacks and grievances taken seriously? Just don’t decide after a phone call. A good event planning company will send you an account manager who will keep you in loop at all times. Knowing who you’d be dealing with is important.
- When things don’t go as planned, how do you handle it?
There is no guarantee that things will go as smoothly as planned, you can never account for natural disasters, rain, some unknown incident occurring etc. There is only so much that we can control. Ask your even potential event planner what sort of measures they have in place if something like this happens? Do they have backup generators for power failures? A canopy for rain? A backup caterer? Discuss what can reasonably be done to protect the event and attendees.
In conclusion
If you are looking for an event planner that goes above and beyond ask these questions! We, at Dawat Pakistan have the answer to all your event related questions. Set up a meeting with us today and let us wow you with our event planning skills. Choose best for your big day!
